Abstract
This paper presents a probabilistic methodology for assessing the survivability of damaged passenger Ro-Ro ships through the identification of critical damage scenarios. The Static Equivalent Method is used to calculate the critical sea state the ship can survive in a given damage scenario and Monte-Carlo simulation is used to take into account the uncertainties in the ship's loading condition at the time of the accident: intact draught, vertical and longitudinal position of the centre of gravity and permeability of the Ro-Ro decks. The application of these methods to the ranking of damage scenarios according to the critical sea state the ship can survive is presented for two different passenger Ro-Ro ships. The critical damage scenarios for each ship are then identified. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to identify the most important random variables affecting the ship's survivability. The number of Monte Carlo runs necessary for stabilising the results is also investigated.